Austin Thai Restaurant Sway’s Rock Rose Location Is Officially Closed

Turns out Austin Thai restaurant Sway permanently shuttered its Rock Rose location in the Domain Northside, which had been closed temporarily since March 2020. The closure of the 11501 Rock Rose Avenue, Suite 100 restaurant was confirmed by a rep for its parent company New Waterloo.

The northern Sway temporarily closed back in March 2020— along with many, many restaurants — for both takeout and dine-in services, with the intention of reopening eventually. It stayed out of operation since then. In February 2021, when New Waterloo confirmed the shutter of Sway’s original location on South First, a rep shared that there were no updates about the Rock Rose address at the time.

This means the sole remaining Sway in Austin is the Westlake location. However, when asked about the Rock Rose shutter, a different rep for the company said that the company is going to expand the restaurant into Aspen sometime in 2023. It’s a move similar to another Austin-based restaurant group: the Colorado city is where McGuire Moorman Lambert operates expansions of its seafood restaurant Clark’s and standalone Tex-Mex restaurant Las Montañas.

Sway originally opened on South First in 2012 with a menu of Australian-styled Thai food as part of New Waterloo under chef Rene Ortiz. He left in 2013, and then the company opened the Rock Rose restaurant in April 2018, followed by Westlake in December 2018. The executive chef is currently Randy Magallanez.

The same New Waterloo rep who confirmed South First Sway’s shutter said that the company had been looking to sell the address before the beginning of the pandemic. The building is now home to 1417 French Bistro, which opened in the summer of 2021.

Similarly, New Waterloo had temporarily closed its downtown French restaurant Le Politique at the beginning of the pandemic, and then later confirmed its permanent shutter in December 2022. That address is going to house a new restaurant from chef Michael Mina, opening sometime in 2023.

And, recently, New Waterloo announced it’s opening a Fredericksburg hotel in the summer with several restaurants overseen by Justin Spencer, Amanda Rockman, and oft-collaborator Olamaie’s Michael Fojtasek.